GETTING IN PUBLIC

I'm just going to once again mention how horrible I am at parties. 

I was hoping that Joonmyun and Chorong would remember that fact and decide that maybe it was a good idea for me to just hide back at the dorm and watch documentaries. 

But no, Chorong was determined to break me out of my comfort zone (but, really, hadn't the last two weeks been full of me doing just that?) and make things right with Minah by sticking me in a tiny dress, plopping me into a pair of high heels and smearing makeup on my face. The only thing that she didn't try to fix was the hair, so I had just settled with putting it in a messy bun and praying that it would be dark enough in whatever venue we were going to so that no one would notice. 

It turns out that we were going to some nightclub right off of campus. It was crazy crowded, which was the biggest red flag warning ever. 

Chorong and Joonmyun skipped inside in front of me while I was greeted by a large palm to the face. 

"ID?" the large bouncer growled. 

Are you serious? No one else had been asked to show any form of identification! And I looked at least eighteen that night. Either way, I was not about to get in trouble with law enforcement and fished out my license in my pocket. 

The bouncer laughed. I'm not even kidding. It was a loud snort followed by a string of tiny, little girl giggles. Oh, come on. My picture was horrible (one of my eyes was closed and my hair makes up most of the background) but he should have at least had the decency to pretend like it wasn't funny. "Are you sure this is you?" he asked, still chuckling to himself. 

It wasn't hard to tell. You don't find someone willing to show that picture to get into a nightclub very often. 

"Um, yeah?" I answered unsure of myself. I don't even know why I was unsure because I'm positive that I know when my birthday is. 

"Hey, this one's with me." One of the last people that I wanted to see (read Jongin) swooped in from out of nowhere, draping his arm around my bare shoulders. People really needed to stop touching my shoulders. It was beginning to creep me out. 

"No problem," the bouncer flashed Jongin a smile and stepped out of the way to let the two of us in. 

That had to have been set up. It was a scientifically proven fact that I looked older than Jongin did. It must have been his hair and how he was wearing a leather jacket. Damn, I needed to take some lessons from that kid. 

"Avery, you came!" Jongin said giddily as we pushed through the hoards of people. I didn't know any of them, by the way. Which made sense because it was Minah and Kyungsoo's party and I obviously didn't have a vast social circle as they did, but still. I couldn't even pick Chorong's face out in the crowd. "Isn't this a sick party?" he asked, motioning at the strangers around us. "That's the best part about Yixing, he always knows how to get done." 

"Who's Yixing?" I asked, not even bothering to move Jongin's arm off of me because I didn't want to get swallowed by the sea of strangers. 

"Zhang?" Jongin, if I was asking you who this person was there was a large chance that I didn't know his last name. "Oh, he's right there." He used the arm that wasn't touching me to point at someone. And by someone, I mean about twenty people because there were way too many bodies in that club to be able to identify a singular person. 

And that theory was quickly proved wrong as Minah materialized out of thin air, flinging her arms around my neck and squeezing me so tightly I wasn't sure if she was hugging me or trying to suffocate me. The fact that I wasn't sure of our friendship status wasn't making my guessing process easier either. Also, I would like to point that there were now three arms on me. Again, I'm all for physical contact, but that didn't mean that people could just keep touching my neck and shoulders. 

"OHMYGODAVEI'MSOSORRYTHATIDIDN'TBELIEVEYOU!" Minah slurred out all at once. Not because she was drunk. When Minah gets excited she jumbles all her words together. Although since we were in the middle of an open bar I couldn't completely rule out the option of intoxication. 

And she just called me 'Ave,' which I wasn't sure if it was a term of endearment or if she just didn't want to say 'Avery'. 

"Um, hi?" I replied, frozen solid. That's how socially awkward I am; I couldn't even hug somebody back. 

Minah pulled away before the lack of oxygen permanently damaged my brain. Her eyes were bright and her smile large. "He proposed to me!" she squealed, waving her large hunk of diamond in my face. That combined with the brightness of her silver mini-dress made it difficult to even look at her for too long. 

"Yeah," I said because I had to make a comment after every sentence that someone said. 

"I'm so sorry that I ever thought that you and Kyungsoo had something going on between you," she gushed, flipping her hair out of her eyes. "Obviously it all makes sense now!" Wait, what was it that made sense? "You and Kyungsoo were spending so much time together because the two of you were planning my engagement party!" 

What? The only party that I had ever 'thrown' was when I bought my Dad an ice-cream cake for his birthday a few years ago. And I didn't even buy the candles. 

"I, um, I had nothing to do with this party," I stammered. It was the truth. It was the most obvious truth that I had ever told. "It was Yixing. Zhang Yixing. He's over there!" I dramatically flung my finger in the same direction that Jongin pointed in a few minutes earlier, successfully smacking some stranger in the side of their face. Smooth, Avery. Real smooth. 

Minah just shook her dismissively. "Don't be so modest." I wasn't being modest. I was being honest. "It's okay that you and Kyungsoo were spending so much time together. I mean, you were obviously doing it because you knew how crazy we were about each other." Um? Minah hugged my neck again. Okay, so we were back into the friendship territory. I didn't really know how to feel about that one. "You are the best friend that I have ever had. And I'm being totally serious right now." She stared into my eyes. Oh, god, she was sober. Now I felt like the worst person ever for calling her a crazy psycho a few hours ago. 

"Congratulations?" Why was everything that I said in the form of a question? What was wrong with me? "I mean, I'm really happy for you and Kyungsoo." 

"Really, Avery, this is going to be the greatest month of my life." Month? I thought that weddings took longer to plan than a month? "You're going to be there, right? At my wedding. I mean, I don't know when it is but you'll be there. You have to be there," she unlatched her arms so that she could wave her wedding ring around in my face some more. 

I made an 'O' face. I couldn't help it, I didn't know what else to do. 

Minah smacked her hands down on my shoulder. Which was really weird because Jongin still had his arm around me while he was chatting to some girl. It was a lot of touching. "Avery, I want for you to be my maid of honor." 

Oh, yeah, there was some definite 'O' face going on in there. 

"But ... but ... it's me," I sputtered. 

She nodded enthusiastically. "I know! That's why I want for you to be it! You were still friends with me after I said all of those nasty things because I thought that you were sleeping with my boyfriend but it turns out that you really aren't and you were just being the best friend that I've always wanted! You should be so thrilled with yourself! I love you, Avery!" 

I needed a drink. I needed multiple drinks. I needed ecstasy. Were there people ever selling it? Wait a minute, I was not about to resort to drugs. I wasn't that desperate. 

"We're going to have so much fun together!" she carried on. The way that the light was reflecting off of her ring was giving me temporary blindness. "Oh, I have to go say hi to Hyeri. I haven't seen her in, like, forever!" Minah detached the rest of her limbs from me and skipped off so that she could greet some more people that I didn't know and would probably never become friends with. 

Meanwhile, I stood there in the middle of a panic attack because I seriously did not know what the squash that I was supposed to do. Technically Minah had apologized and that meant that it would have been okay for me to forgive her. But at the same time, I couldn't forgive her because she's insane and was fully capable of killing someone. 

But then it's like friends fight all of the time, right? Well, I don't fight with my friends because I'm not strong enough to get my point across and I never won arguments. I never even won Bingo. But anyways, we were friends. And wasn't it one of those friends things to forgive the other person? Weren't we supposed to relish on the good times that we all had together and ignore the tiny squabbles? Even though her accusing me of sleeping with her boyfriend was more than a tiny squabble. 

Can you even refuse to be the maid of honor? First, not even she knew when she was getting married. Weren't you supposed to choose a date before you figured all of those things out? And then it wasn't even like Minah and I were that close. If anything I would have expected her to choose Chorong over me. Although I can see why she didn't because not everyone enjoys Chorong's dry sense of humor as much as Joonmyun and I do. 

Plus I'm not eve- 

I was (rudely) interrupted by Jongin jamming his finger into my ear. Which hurt. And was weird because there are a lot of ways to get someone's attention and potentially making them go deaf is not one of the good ones. 

"Ow!" I yelped, rubbing my ear in pain. "What was that for?"

"What's that girl's name?" Jongin asked. He had to lean in close in order for me to hear him and that was not appreciated. I did not want to ever be that close to Jongin. The last time we were that close to each other we shared a bed and then he made my once-best-friend hate me. 

Also, Jongin had just asked me an extremely vague question. You can't just ask 'who's that' in a room full of people. Even I, the one who never left her apartment, knew better than that. 

"Who?" I responded anyway because there was no one else there for me to talk to. What I typically did was hang out by the food table and eventually, someone like Sehun would drift over and we would engage in normal conversation. Only this time there wasn't a food table and it was a bar instead and I don't drink so ... 

It was going to be a night of loneliness. 

"The one over there," Jongin rolled his eyes as if I had just asked the world's dumbest question. Also, I was pretty sure that he knew that I had to sometimes wear glasses and couldn't see squash without them. "The one with the long wavy hair? Sort of tall? Red dress? Looks like a fairy?" 

Oh. I knew who that was. "Naeun?" 

He nodded. "Naeun," he repeated her name slowly. "I like her. Introduce me to her." 

Too bad that was never going to happen. Naeun didn't date children. 

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. She's going out with Taemin." 

"I don't care if she's going out with Taemin," he scoffed. "I asked for y